Not necessarily about books or coffee.

One brain-melt with a side order of crushed optimism

Sometimes there’s so much to do, or one thing to get done is so massive and overwhelming, that I freeze up and don’t get anything done at all. This never happens at work, but it does happen at home, and it happened with this blog last week. I had a dozen ideas of things to write about, freaked out about not being able to do all of them and ended up not writing a thing. Really, the way to handle it would have been to do a few different entries over the course of the week. But God forbid I should break my arbitrary one-entry-a-week rule by writing too much instead of too little.

Feeling this overwhelmed is a fairly consistent thing at the moment, anyway, what with trying to train and work and everything else. This weekend the weight has been lifted somewhat because I have holes in my left foot and can’t train properly for two days – which is obviously going to do great things for my athleticism, but frankly that’s been doing really badly anyway. I’m basically stricken with guilt whatever happens at the moment. When I train, I feel guilty because I’m not sorting out my home life. When I try to deal with home, I feel guilty for not training properly. So both home and training are in a state of half-arsedness at the moment. It’s just fabulous, as you can imagine.

If obligations were Scanners..

I have 11 weeks to go until the race (still plenty of time for training, I tell myself – hell, the standard plan for a marathon is 16 weeks!) and about six weeks until the familiarisation weekend that I’ve signed up for – which will at least tell me if I can get round the course. I don’t think, at the moment, that I can. It irks me to write it down, but I have no confidence in my ability to do 70.3 at the moment. I wish I’d picked a flatter course. Though I can at least turn up and try, and if I get dragged off the course for being too slow, so be it. If I finish it, everything else is going to look easy as pie.

I am having health worries at the moment, which I have been avoiding getting checked out because I don’t think it’s really anything major, and if it is, I don’t want to know. Note to reader: this is not the way to approach your health. Tremors in my arms and legs; difficulty breathing; palpitations: all the fun things. I was getting chest pains just going up the stairs, but those seem to have stopped now. I don’t know what it’s like to have a panic attack, so maybe that’s what this is. Nerves. I’m going to try meditating or something, see if that helps. Anyway, that’s been making training a bit difficult and less enjoyable than normal, to say the least.

I went for a bike ride a couple of weekends ago and got quite badly lost, in pouring rain, to the point of accidentally ending up at home. The weekend after that was a recovery week. This week, see aforementioned holes-in-feet. BUT I have finally got me some clipless pedals and shoes – heaven knows, my biking could do with the extra power – and aim to get some practice clipping in and out on the turbo and just generally getting used to them. I’m quite excited, actually. Once I’ve got them sorted, I will head to a park. I find it difficult to measure how well I’m doing at my cycling on the road, because I’m still so terrified of cycling in amongst all the cars that my breathing and adrenaline are at silly levels before I even hit the hills. So train to Richmond it is.

On the train with my bike is also how I’m getting to Wimbleball for the familiarisation weekend, which I’m actually more nervous about than the race itself. Tickets are bought and paid for, no backing out now! I keep telling myself that if it’s so very bad, at least I’ll know to pull out of the race. I really, really want to back out of the stupid half-iron (sometimes, and sometimes I’m ok – at the moment, I want to back out). I sick of training, I’m sick of organising, I’m burnt out. But then I remember all the other easier (probably) things I have planned for after this, which will be even easier if I keep the training up and think I may as well go through with it.

Anyway, a very talented writer friend (who has a blog here) is picking me up from the station, getting me to the lake and generally has sorted out my travel and accommodation concerns in one fell swoop. Because he’s awesome. But don’t tell anyone I said that, because it’ll ruin his carefully built bad reputation.

At the moment, the order of focus goes #1 Paris Marathon (which is next weekend, and I haven’t figured out how I’m training in Paris yet), #2 familiarisation weekend, #3 race. After that the more laidback things start to happen and I can’t WAIT to have fun doing distances I know I can do and not worrying about every little thing. I also can’t wait to be able to walk again – I stuck to the sofa right now. Which means I might actually write more this weekend, because there’s not much else to do.

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2 thoughts on “One brain-melt with a side order of crushed optimism”

Yep Overwhelm Phase must the phase we are in now. It’s the relentless packing of food, logistics of where to train when and when to eat with partner and when to get up (“I could train at 5am or lie with you like a normal couple”) and the nevere nding emotional turmoil to make one small decision like shall I go for a run that no one else knows about…

Total respect that you and CM are doing Paris ensemble, being support crew is a massive task during your own training. Enjoy Paris first and foremost, you know you need some joie de vie! Run in the beautiful Paris parks, swim in the indoor beaches in Montparnasse and don’t call it training – call it an excuse to be voyeuristic on the Paris Fitness Set.

The tri training weekend – again big respect. It’s going to be scary; there will be total sandbaggers going “I’ve done no training since I finished Roth in 8 hours so I’m like waaaaay unfit” Ignore them. As you go through it, imagine writing it up like a blog entry, the colorful entries on characters, the pain you’re going to endure all for a good article! 🙂 And at least they don’t have time cut offs on training weekend!

I’m currently too scared to do the maths on “will I make it round the bike course”. I am both thrilled and terrified that there may only be ten minutes in it. Think of the suspense for my support crew! Ha. I dunno. I guess if it was easy we strange folk wouldn’t end up in this strange theatre of pain… It’s almost easier to think of the tiny details I am overwhelmed in to think of the big things like “do I want to do this” That’s like wondering do I believe in other life forms outside this planet or the meaning of life, or God 🙂

I wish you the best with the training and the races and the general overwhelmed-ness, of course, but I’ve been totally distracted by your tremors and palpitations and wheezes. Do go get that checked out. If it’s “just” panic attacks — all you have to do is panic less! Ha, ha, ha…